Manchester Victoria … more than just a railway station

Manchester Victoria still retains that grandeur which allowed it once to boast it was the gateway to the north, Scotland and Ireland as well as the Continent.

And to underline that boast the elegant and ornate iron and glass canopy announced the destinations that its trains served in 1909 with the equally impressive map which picked out the rail routes of the old Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company.

 

I have often written about it’s past from the opening in 1844 to the station’s expansion over Irk Town and the cemetery at Walker’s Croft and on to nibble way at the former Manchester Workhouse site, concluding with the uncertain period of the 1980s and the arrival of the tram.

But despite its elegance it has always struck me as a messier railway station than Piccadilly with its busy concourse or the iconic timber entrance to Manchester Oxford Road.

You get the sense that the successive changes and developments have left it as a place where the all the bits that make it work have been left on show.

Which echoes the mantra of my Maths teacher in the 1960s that “always show the working out that leads to your answer, even if you are wrong it’s the evidence of how you worked at it and tried to get there”.*

And that seems exactly what you get with that spaghetti like set of tracks leading in and out of the station.  

It isn’t pretty but it is how you get out and on to Shudehill.

In the same way the new bits that link the station with the AO Arena make no concessions to hiding anything away.  

The arena opened in 1995 and consigned those through railway platforms into a subterranean place made all the more claustrophobic by the sheer number of passengers destined for towns across Lancashire and Yorkshire and transported in a variety of work a day trains.

I might be wrong, but I have yet to see any of those sleek inter city trains which will whisk you from Piccadilly south or thunder north to Scotland.

All of that said Victoria still has lots to see from the war memorials to the wooden booking hall and former first class buffet.

And that will do for me.

Location; Victoria Railway Station

Pictures; Victoria, 2025-2026 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* Mr. Gubby, Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern School, 1965

*Victoria Railway Station, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Victoria%20Railway%20Station

&

Market Street to Victoria, The History of Greater Manchester By Tram, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20History%20of%20Greater%20Manchester%20by%20Tram 

Harold Morris of Eltham and Welling, a life lived out in service to the community.... part 2

In that great sweep of history marked by revolutions, wars and natural disasters most of us will not even get a footnote in some long and detailed history of the 20th century.

Ours are “little lives lived out in a great century.”  That said it is the stories of the little people who fascinate me most whether they be the woman who cleaned up after Alfred burnt the cakes, the lonely herdsman who watched the passing of a Roman legion as it made its way westward to Maiden Castle or the family who didn’t watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on TV.

In an age all too ready to be impressed by celebrities and the autobiographies of people who have yet to reach their third decade I revel in the stories of men and women who quietly got on with life, providing for their families, looking to improve their communities, and leaving their mark in a far more positive way than a headline in a Sunday newspaper.

One such of these was Harold Morris, born in 1902, died in 1976 and a milkman for over 50 years.

Not perhaps the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster but nevertheless a story which spans the last century and pretty much reflects how that hundred years rolled out and the changes that it brought to people’s lives.

When Harold was born virtually all the technologies we take for granted had yet to be developed or were in their infancy, but in that span of 74 years he was a party to the age of cheap air travel, the first landings on the moon, along with television, and much more.

At the age of 13 he could have followed his father and school friends  into the Woolwich Arsenal, instead he set up his own business as a milkman.

“There was no milk delivery service for the villagers around Welling where he lived. If they wanted milk they had to take a  jug or container of some kind up the hill to the dairy farm on Shooters Hill.”*

And being an enterprising young lad he walked “across the fields to Eltham to visit his grandparents, who lived in Courtyard.  Thomas Tillings, the omnibus company, had a yard full of horses, carriage and carts of all kinds just behind his grandparents' cottage.  

And he persuaded them let him have the use of a horse and cart so that he could set up a milk delivery service to serve the villagers of Welling.”

It was a job he would continue to do for the rest of his working life during which time the horse and cart was replaced by an electric float.

Holidays as for so many people of his generation were spent beside the seaside, and like his northern counterparts who were drawn to Blackpool and the resorts of the east coast and north Wales, the Morris family would have had their week by the sea in Kent in a  B&B made easier by the introduction of a week’s paid holiday.

Cheap rail travel added to the opportunities for that break by the sea, and by the early 20th century places like Blackpool and the resorts south and east of London boomed in the summer months.

His niece Jean remembers a generous man who was a "very special brother to his young sisters, Hilda and Dorothy.  

On pay day he used to tell them that he had dropped some coins on his bedroom floor and that if they found any they could keep them. 

They never found less than 6d apiece.

It was at his home that the family's wakes were held, when all the aunts gathered in the front parlour drinking tea.

But never ever taking off their hats because of  the bother of hat pins.  

Since his passing in 1976,  there have been no family wakes and his death took with it the heart of the Morris family.”

Now I can’t think of a better tribute to a man’s life.

*Jean his niece

Pictures; courtesy of Jean Gammons

The day I thought I was in the country …… urban tales from Chorlton-cum-Hardy

Now, the purist will immediately point out I was not in Chorlton nor the countryside.

But on a hot summer’s day sometime at the end of the 1970s I rather thought I was.

I had taken myself off across the meadows and discovered the old weir at that bend in the Mersey.

The weir had been built in the 18th century to break the force of a flood surge which might have damaged the aqueduct carrying the Duke’s Canal.

The river regularly flooded in earlier centuries and once in the 1840s the force of that surge was so strong it damaged the weir itself.

Even now the base of the weir can still be marshy and after a wet winter the water will stretch out into the surrounding land.

On the day I discovered the spot there was just a hint of water but enough for the cows who grazed on the grass.

And it was the cows, the pasture and the steeple that offered up the illusion of somewhere rural.

Although I did have to frame the picture to miss the tower block and get the chapel of Stretford Cemetery in the centre.*

And before any one sneers, .... yes the quality of the pictures was poor.  In my defence I was just beginning to develop and print images using smelly photography and the negatives have sat in our cellar for over 40 years.

Location; the meadows west of the Mersey, circa 1978, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Stretford Cemetery, https://www.trafford.gov.uk/residents/births-deaths-and-marriages/burials-and-cremations/cemeteries-and-crematoria-in-Trafford/stretford-cemetery.aspx

One hundred years of one house in Chorlton …. part 162 …. endings

The continuing story  of the house Joe and Mary Ann Scott lived in for over 50 years and the families that have lived here since.*

Long before a distinguished historian chose to tell the story of a house and made it into a popular TV show, I embarked on the same historical journey.

Mine was located on Beech Road and what started in the December of 2011 was joined by two spin offs based on the houses I lived in London and a municipal flat in the Italian city of Varese.

And in time sat beside the story of a garage which began as Chorlton’s first cinema, another building which over three centuries had many different stories and even morphed into a series on the Nokia 3310 and our own Citroën 2CV bought brand new and the last to roll off a production line in Portugal.

What each had in common was that the house, the garage, and the car were just vehicles to tell the bigger story, which showed the transformation of Chorlton and Britain over time.

But was always the house opposite the Rec which I kept coming back to.  It was built by Joe Scott in 1915 who built many of the smaller houses and semis in Chorlton.  And it was here that he and his wife Mary Ann lived for the next 58 years.  In all it has had four owners of which we are the only ones to have had children born here.

I first washed up in the house for a brief stay in 1976 when it was owned by my dear friends, John, Mike and Lois, returning just a few years later when I bought it.

I can’t beat Joe and Mary Ann’s tenure, but I have called it home for fifty years, and even during my short break away it was always home.

To which there are many others over the years who can also have a claim to have passed through, from friends, and family to the childhood mates of my sons some of whom still speak fondly of their time here.

I opened the series in reflective mood asking "Why is it that only the rich and more especially the old, landed rich can talk of holding a great house or estate for posterity?

They tell us as if we should be grateful that they are custodians, not owners and it is their duty to maintain it and hand it on to the next generation. All of which is fine, but theirs is always the family that holds onto it and raises the question of what about the rest of us? Do we not also do the same?

Some might argue that there is no comparison between Blenheim Palace, and a 1930 semi built on the outer reaches of Manchester. Or that a post war council house has anything in common with one of the country’s national treasures. 

Such a grand place with its Adam furniture, Capability Brown landscaped gardens, priceless paintings, steeped in history is unique and therefore ranks well beyond the mass produced, often ugly and in some cases poorly maintained social housing.

But both have histories, both were built for someone to live in, and both were cherished by their inhabitants.

This is a roundabout way of writing about our house. It was built a hundred years ago, has had only four custodians, of which we are the only ones to have had children here. 

More than that this is the only home our eldest three have known and it was where one of them was born. It is also a place where countless friends have come and stayed before moving on, seen Christmas parties, a boat turning event in the back garden, and a succession of decorating fashions.

So, over the next few months I want to tell the story of this one house set against the bigger picture of what was going on here in Chorlton and the national backdrop".

The stories were meant to only last a few months but have run to over 160 stories, and far out ran the one hundred years of the title.

They often picked up on bits found in the house, from fuse boxes, the old copper in the cellar and the mystery of why the Scott’s never installed a kitchen range.  

Most then became an exploration of the changes in our social, economic and political life set against two world wars and that post-war affluence.

During that time, I came close to Joe and Mary Ann and some of the objects.

These included a broken clay pipe found in the garden and maybe dating from the 1840s, and remanets of electrical fixtures.

But things come to an end and my family’s stewardship is no different and so to mangle that wonderful final message from the dolphins in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker series of books “So Long and Thanks for all the stories ….. and the memories …. and all the friends”. 

Bettered perhaps only by "There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story." — Frank Herbert

Location, Beech Road

Pictures; random pictures from the collection of Andrew Simpson and friends

*The story of a house, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=the+story+of+a+house

*So long and Thanks for all the Fish, the fourth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe, Douglas Adams, 1984

Discovering the forgotten

I don’t suppose Charles Taylor or his wife Ann would have been much surprised that their home has not survived.

Taylor's Court, 1849

In 1851 they were living in Taylor’s Court which was one of those tiny places sandwiched between other streets.   All our towns and cities had their share of these courts which were often a byproduct of in filling where a builder or speculator fell on an open space and built a few houses for rent.

In the case of Taylor’s Court there were just five such houses which were accessed through two narrow passages.  The properties commanded rents of 2/3d which were not the cheapest rents in the area but not far off.  I can’t be sure of the size of the five houses, but they show up on maps of the period as back to backs, so it is most likely that they were one up one downs.

And like other streets in the immediate vicinity there was a degree of overcrowding.  So, while in four of the houses the number of inhabitants ranged from 2 to four people, at number 1 the Taylor’s squeezed a total of six family members and a lodger their home.

The occupations of the residents were typical of the area, and included those who worked in textiles, shoe and dress making, and others engaged as labourers and launderesses.

Taylor's Court and surrounding streets, 1849

Their origins were equally mixed, with 5 of the 20 having been born in Ireland and the rest from Manchester, Cheshire, Cumberland, and Scotland.

But at least they could give an address, which was more than could be said of the Holland and Horan families who lived in the narrow passage which gave access to Taylor’s Court.  The census records their address as Stock’s Court but on maps of the period it appears as No. 1 Passage, and in the Rate Books, as just a Court attached to the list of properties on Royton Street and are not recorded in any of the street directories.

Taylor's Court moves, circa 1900

I have no idea when Taylor’s Court vanished but Goad’s Insurance maps, which cover the last two decades of the 19th century show them still in place, but the passageway has been renamed Taylor’s Court, and the original location has lost its houses and its length is described as “Wood Hoardings 40’ high. 

The remnants my have lingered on, but by 1951 it and the eastern side of Royton Street had been subsumed by industrial units. 

And just as the properties have faded so have the residents of the two courts, and despite a trawl of the census returns I have only been able to trace two.  In 1841 Charles Taylor was living in the Deansgate area, but after 1851 has so far disappeared from the official records.

The search for Thomas Holland has proved a tad more successful.  I know he was from Cheshire and that his younger brother farmed over 200 acres.

In 1841 he was still living with his family but ten years later he was in Stocks Court where he was renting the house and a workshop.  In both the census for that year and the street directories he gave his occupation as Whitesmith which my Wikipedia describes as “a metalworker who does finishing work on iron and steel such as filing, lathing, burnishing or polishing. The term also refers to a person who works with "white" or light-coloured metals, and is sometimes used as a synonym for tinsmith”*

All gone, 1951

A decade later he and his wife were on Shaw Street in Salford, still working as a Whitesmith, on a street which appears to be only a marginal step up from that Court off Deansgate.

All of which is a little confusing, given that on the 1871 census while visiting his brother he describes himself as “gentleman”, which only adds to the mystery of his birthplace, which on all the official documents is different.

Of course we maybe dealing with different men, but the other details of occupation, wife and age all would suggest we are dealing with the same man, and I doubt I will resolve the confusion.

Location; Manchester, Salford and Cheshire

Pictures; Royton Street in 1849, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford, 1844-49, and Royton Street circa 1880-1900 from Goad's Fire Insurance maps, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/and Royton Street 1951, from the OS map of Manchester and Salford

*Whitesmith, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitesmith

Harold Morris of Eltham and Welling, a life lived out in service to the community.... part 1

This is the young Harold Morris sometime in the early 1920s.

It is a wonderful picture not least because it takes us into a lost world when milk was still marketed by small independent businesses and delivered by horse and cart.

In an age when much milk was not so clean, fresh or free from disease it was important always to reassure the public that the product on sale was safe, and so to the promise on the side of the cart, “WARRANTED PURE NEW MILK” with the added enticer that it came “WITH ALL ITS CREAM.”

Now the firm in question was P.W.Briggs of Belle Grove in Welling who were later to be taken over by
United Diaries.

But not long before this picture was taken young Harold had run his own milk business and this is his story, which was researched and written by his niece Jean Gammons.

"Harold was born in Eltham in 1902 - the firstborn of Maud and William George Morris and a grandson of John and Annie Morris of Eltham.

By 1906 the family had moved to Belle Grove, then a hamlet situated on Watling Street at the foot of Shooters Hill,  close to the village of Welling on the ancient road between London and Dover.

There was no milk delivery service  for the villagers then -  if they wanted milk then they had to take a  jug or container of some kind up the hill to the dairy farm on Shooters Hill.

Young Harold's father was a machinist in the Royal Arsenal - where many young men of the surrounding area, including Eltham, would easily have found work making "Implements of War".   

War did come in 1914, and in the following year Harold turned 13 and was free to leave school and perhaps join his peers and his father at the Arsenal.  

But Harold remained a country boy at heart, who loved horses, birds and gardening. So what could he do if he turned his back on the Arsenal?

He had an idea, and so he walked across the fields to Eltham to visit his grandparents, who lived in Courtyard.  Thomas Tillings, the omnibus company, had a yard full of horses, carriage and carts of all kinds just behind his grandparents' cottage.

Perhaps they would let him have the use of a horse and cart so that he could set up a milk delivery service to serve the villagers of Welling.

They did, and thus he began his long and happy career as a milkman. Soon, his little enterprise was taken over by a bigger local company:  P W Briggs; and later by the United Dairies.

Young Harold's first love broke his heart, but when he was 26 he married a Bexleyheath girl, Alma Minnie Shove. The bridesmaid was his youngest sister, Dorothy (Jean's mother), a self-willed child of whom there might be more later. 

Her dress had too many frills in her view and so, on the bus journey to Bexleyheath she took scissors with her and cut off as many as she could before her parents noticed.

Harold was a good husband and father, holidays being days at the seaside in the time before  Holidays Abroad became common.

Through two world wars he served his country in a quiet way, ensuring that none of his customers ever woke up without milk on their doostep for their first cup of tea of the day.  

He won Gold Stars from the UD for his high selling figures: his secret, he said, was to whistle, so that people knew he was around and would then come out to buy something extra.

By the time he retired in 1967 to concentrate on his birds and garden, he had been a milkman for nearly 50 years.”

And it says much for his hard work that when he retired “his customers loaded him with presents, a total of £100 in premium bonds, good luck cards and a poem.”*

*Dartford Times, 1967

Pictures; from the collection of Jean Gammons

When the internet proves better than your memory

Now I have been  reflecting on that day in August 1970 when along with thousands of others I listened to a host of bands at the Isle of Wight.

The festival and the hill, 1970

It was one of those trips down memory lane prompted by two of my much younger cousins who posted about the Doors.

And quick as a flash I replied with the story making it very clear that I had no intention of searching the Internet to find out what I had forgotten about the Festival, preferring to let my impression of the event be the story.

But I did fall asleep while the Doors played on and so Marisa thought it only fair that I should be given the opportunity to listen to that “lost performance.”*

According to the site they played eight songs, “1. Introduction – 0:18, 2, Back Door Man – 4:18, 3. Break On Through – 4:53,, 4. When The Music’s Over – 13:31, 5. Ship Of Fools – 7:37, 6. Roadhouse Blues – 6:07, 7. Light My Fire – 14:21, 8. The End – 18:18.”

Almost half a century on I have no idea when I fell asleep, all of which will make it fun to listen to again.

And the site also included the date ....... August 30 which again was lost in the midst of time.

A very young me, 1970

Now I still have no intention of looking up the rest of the details of the event, suffice to say I was there, and that pretty much confirms that rather silly observation about the 60s that “if you can remember it you weren’t there.” 

So just perhaps I qualify after all as a genuine part of that era.

And that leads to a serious observation that while the Internet has many detractors it remains a powerful way to follow through a whole range of research projects.

Like many I use genealogical sites almost every day to track people, through census returns, street directories and the General Registry Office, and for over a decade I have fallen back on those digitalised versions of long out of print books which sit on dusty shelves in universities across the mid west of the USA.

August at the Isle of Wight, 1970

The purists will of course argue that this is no substitute for holding the original, but when the original is on the other side of the world there is little chance that accessing it and holding it will ever be a reality.

So there you have it, and as I write I am listening to that performance, and have no idea whether it was during Ship of Fools or Roadhouse Blues, although it would e appropriate if it had been Light My Fire, given that my memory was of all the camp fires dotted about the hill where were sitting.

That hill and somewhere there might have been me

The fires glowed against the darkening sky and made the moment magical if sadly not enough to keep me awake.

So thank you to my cousins Marisa and Chris in Ontario for both reminding me of that long lost adventure and for allowing me to listen to what I missed.

Location; the Isle of Wight, August 30 1970,


Pictures; me in 1970 from the collection of Andrew Simpson and at the Festival, 1970, Roland Godefroy,who granted permission to use the image  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 

*The Doors – Live At The Isle Of Wight Festival -1970 – Past Daily Backstage Weekend,